User Experience Testing

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Often heard lumped into lofty discussions around conversions and persona-driven design, UX is a trendy blanket term that is constantly relied upon but rarely defined as it grows from buzzword to brass tacks. Anything that shapes your audience’s perception is influenced by UX, and the trick is marrying all those micro-level interactions with a larger, cohesive vision.

The term “user experience” (abbreviated as UX) is thrown around a lot in the digital marketing industry. Often heard lumped into lofty discussions around conversions and persona-driven design, UX is a trendy blanket term that is constantly relied upon but rarely defined as it grows from buzzword to brass tacks.

In a nutshell, UX is about making your digital interactions on any device easy, rather than frustrating. Essentially, take a complex task and create multiple intuitive paths for users to effortlessly accomplish said task. Then repeat that process for every task folks would value—that’s the micro level of UX. Take a step back and you’ll notice that UX encompasses every aspect of a person’s interaction with a product, service, or company. Anything that shapes your audience’s perception is influenced by UX, and the trick is marrying all those micro-level interactions with a larger, cohesive vision.

THE EVOLUTION OF UX
From its origins in software, the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) side of UX focused on usability—this is the study of how people interact with computers and to what extent computers are able to interact with humans. Specifically, HCI is dedicated to training users to avoid errors in certain systems and how to utilize testing methods to measure the success of particular ideas. This was the beginning of UX as we know it, and still informs our UX foundations through task flows, analytics, and usability tests.

UX Testing Methodology

We use a variety of methods to determine how user interactions generate value. It should be said that an interaction is more than just a completed task—it’s a chance to make a deeper impression with target audiences. Which is good—since at the end of the day our primary focus should be one thing: people.

UX is centered on people, so it involves a person’s emotions about using a particular product, system, or service. In addition, it includes a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects, such as utility, ease of use, and efficiency of the system. With people at the center, UX must have an understanding of empathy, personality, anthropology, and psychology. It leverages brand and messaging guidelines, attention to detail, transitions, and animations, and it values the power of good design and content details.

UX Testing Tactics

For complex project with wide variety of content and audience types, we like to assemble focus groups comprised of friends and family members of the Gravitate team. In these scenarios we’re often testing page layouts and userflows that our strategists have outlined in the content blueprint. Without the website team present, a presenter will walk the testers through hand-drawn wireframes, asking the tester to narrate their thoughts as they progress through a task.

Testing in progress…

For example, we recently launched a credit union website. During the strategy phase, we worked with paper prototypes and asked testers to try and open an account and apply for a loan. With fingers poised over sketched “Learn More” buttons on poster board, we noted exact pain points and hesitations throughout the proposed userflow. We followed the testing with an exhaustive interview and had each participant talk through their frustrations with the user experience. This allows our designers and strategists to rethink problem areas, solidify ideas and assumptions, and begin thinking of new ways to satisfy any newly discovered user needs. While user-testing to this extent is time-consuming and can slow down the strategy-phase of a website, it never fails to improve the final user experience.